Account takeover is a form of identity theft in which an attacker obtains an individual's personal information (such as password, user name, or mail address). Using this personal information, the attacker achieves access to a victim's account and can use the account without user's concern. In addition, the attacker might change the account information (such as password) to prevent the user logging into his account.
Today, most companies work in the cloud (Internet cloud computing). Working in the cloud can mean that all of the user's personal data is stored in cloud services, including documents, bank account information, sensitive business logic information, etc. A popular cloud-based implementation is software as a service (SaaS). Using SaaS, users communicate directly with applications implemented as software deployed on cloud hardware.
According to Check Point's incident report statistics, in the 4th quarter of 2015, 53% of all incidents have occurred in the cloud. 38% of these incidents were account takeovers. These incidents are generally recorded events, that are security related, seen in the “wild” (on the public Internet), of customers that were attacked during this period.